The Last of Her Kind

I recommend The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez because I found it an absorbing portrait of a friendship in which I wasn’t sure if the two people in it even liked each other. Georgette, called George, is from a working-class family, and Ann is her wealthy college roommate. It is the late 1960s. For me, the book had a fresh angle on the protest movements. George’s focus in college is trying to pull herself up.

To me, George and Ann’s friendship is like a house on a cliff–dangerous, depending on what door you open. This book has stayed… show more.

If you’ve ever had a significantly eccentric or doctrinaire friend, you know that there are risks and rewards. I love the way this novel acknowledges the jagged edges of certain friendships, which can be deep friendships all the same.

The novel begins at Barnard College when George, who grew up poor in upstate New York, meets Ann, her righteous and intense roommate. Ann is doing her best to renounce her privileged background, and although George finds her flagrant acts of idealism strange and embarrassing at first, the two women develop a strong bond.

Told in first-person, we get George’s very… show more.

The Last of Her Kind is an expansive and compelling portrait of the connection between two college roommates, set against the backdrop of 1960s counterculture.

Both main characters – George, who is trying to shed her working-class origins, and Ann, desperate to disavow her wealthy family – are handled with sympathy and nuance. The historical setting is expertly researched without being heavy-handed, and the plot features at least one huge twist that you won’t see coming.

Although this is a long book, I enjoyed it so much that I had to ration myself not to read it all at once.